NRW B B 27.15 ANNEX 1
Incident Management
Strategy 2015 - 2020
Incident Management Strategy 2015 – 2020
CONTENTS
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Incident management and NRW
3. Our incident response role
4. Incident Communication
5. Impact of incidents
6. Corporate Priorities
7. Delivering Results
What do we want to achieve?
How will we achieve our aim?
Working with others
8. Our Focus Over the Next Five Years
9. Monitoring and Evaluation
10.
Reviewing our work
Appendix 1 - definitions
Appendix 2 – our incident sectors
Appendix 3 – case studies
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1. Introduction
Natural Resources Wales’ overall purpose is to ensure that the environment and
natural resources of Wales are sustainably maintained, enhanced and used, now
and in the future. We can only achieve this if we value and pro-actively engage with
communities and businesses to foster mutual understanding and a shared vision,
and develop better working partnerships and services. With our move towards
natural resource management1, our work with communities will be considered within
a wider management framework, where social, environmental and economic benefits
are considered in the round.
We are a Category One Responder2 under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, we are
subject to the full set of civil protection duties to assess risk, plan, warn and inform,
share and co-operate with other responders.
This Strategy presents the high level objectives for how Natural Resources Wales
will deliver the priorities in its Corporate Plan that relate to our work preparing for and
responding to environmental incidents3. Incident management is one of our most
important core functions and is maintained on a 24 hour 365 day basis. An
accompanying action plan sets out more detailed actions.
We will develop our incident management role as part of our overall approach to
delivering natural resource management and the prevention of environmental
damage. It includes the way in which we prevent, prepare for, respond to deploy staff
and recover while learning from all types of incidents. We will prioritise our work to
ensure we secure the highest benefits to the environment, people and economy of
Wales. We will provide organisational resilience through appropriate preparedness,
training, business continuity4, incident plans and our ability to respond around the
clock as appropriate through our duty rotas. We will do this by:
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Delivering an effective and consistent response to the likelihood and
consequences of environmental incidents, such as pollution events, floods
and disease outbreaks.
Running our business and the way that we manage our land as an exemplar
Providing advice to the public, business and other organisations in delivering
a resilient ecosystem5 approach to incident management.
Managing the likelihood and the consequences of environmental incidents is good
for people’s health and well being6, is good for local and national economies and is
good for the environment. As such the influence of this Strategy is wide ranging and
will support the delivery of overarching Welsh Government goals set out in the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Bill and the Environment Bill, and delivery of
existing Welsh Government priorities such as Vibrant and Viable Places
1
See appendices for definition of natural resource management
See appendices for the definition of category one responder under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004
3
See Appendices 1 & 2 for our definition of ‘incidents’ & Section 6 for the relevant corporate priorities
4
See appendices for definition of business continuity
5
See appendices for definition of a resilient ecosystem
6
"Well-being put simply is about ‘how we are doing as individuals, as communities and as a nation and how sustainable this is
for the future ... It includes ... areas such as health, relationships, education and skills, what we do, where we live, our finances,
the economy, governance, the environment and measures of 'personal well-being' (individuals' assessment of their own wellbeing). ONS
2
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Regeneration Framework7. It also links closely with priorities set out in our ‘Good for
People’ strategies, particularly: Communities and Regeneration, Education and
Skills; Enterprise, and; Public Engagement. This strategy should be read in
conjunction with those as many of the actions are cross-cutting.
2. Incident Management and Natural Resources Wales
The remit of Natural Resources Wales covers the management of Wales’ air, land,
water (in our rivers, seas and underground), plant and animal species. We are the
largest public sector body in Wales, managing 7% of the land area of Wales – much
of it near to where people live and work: We receive approximately 9,000 calls to our
incident hotline (0800 807060) each year and we take steps to help protect people,
businesses and the environment from incidents. Approximately one third of our staff
are involved in either incident preparation, response, or as dedicated specialist
incident roles.
Preventing incidents from occurring in the first place is our ultimate goal, to ensure
our natural resources are appropriately managed, and is an intrinsic part of both our
incident preparation and regulatory work. As an evidence based organisation we will
use data and analysis to communicate a compelling narrative on the clear benefits to
communities, the economy and environment from preventing environmental
incidents.
The natural resources of Wales are rich and diverse and we need to take priority
steps to protect and improve them. We regulate over 1,700 industrial, waste and
water sites, protect over 1000 biodiversity and geodiversity sites of national or
international importance, directly manage 42 National Nature Reserves, five Visitor
centres and120,000 hectares of woodland as part of the Welsh Government
Woodland Estate and manage the risk of river and coastal flooding to 208,000
homes and businesses such as by issuing flood warnings and providing flood
defences. Wales’ timber production is worth £400m per year but is vulnerable to
outbreaks of pests and diseases such as Phytopthora ramorum in larch trees. Many
of Wales’ habitats and wildlife species are not in favourable condition, as highlighted
in the State of Nature Report (2013). We need to help reverse that trend, and
preventing the impacts of incidents is part of that suite of measures. We also need to
help to care for our protected landscapes, including Areas of Outstanding Natural
Beauty, National Parks and historic landscapes.
Our incident management role is underpinned by a range of statutory duties and
powers, as outlined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, Wildlife and Countryside Act
1981, Plant Health Act 1967, Forestry Act 1967, Environment Permitting Regulations
2010 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 amongst others. Our service
is Grant in Aid funded from the Welsh Government and it needs to be focussed to
deliver efficient and effective value.
Over the lifetime of this strategy we will enhance the effectiveness of our incident
management work, how we work with our partners and liaise with communities. We
will do this by fully integrating our legacy organisations’ incident management roles
The Framework charges NRW directly with ‘close engagement with local communities in identifying
the opportunities available to them.’
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and prioritise our efforts so that we can make the biggest difference. We have
strategic, tactical and operational led work to ensure we have correct governance in
place for preventing, preparing, responding, deploying staff and recovering from the
impact and reviewing incidents to show what we have learnt and evolved to provide
and effective service.
3. Our incident response role
We are a Category One Responder under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, giving
us an important legal responsibility to respond directly to incidents and to support the
incident management roles of other organisations such as the emergency services,
health boards and local authorities by providing advice and information.
We are not an emergency service, it is the police who usually co-ordinate the overall
management of a major incident when the incident has the potential for public safety
impacts, and local authorities who lead the provision of community support and
recovery. As a regulator and advisor we work to minimise the frequency and impact
of incidents. Also in our advisory capacity, we provide specialist technical advice and
data on a wide range of topics to assist our professional partners in how they
undertake their incident management roles and start the recovery work early to
minimise environment impacts. As an operator we minimise the likelihood of
incidents occurring on the land we manage and maintain our specific incident
management assets, such as flood defences. At all times we will deal with any
incident in its entirety, considering its direct and indirect consequences including the
measures used to manage it.
By ‘incident’ we mean:
A specific event, which is brought to our attention, and is within our areas of
responsibility and which may have an environmental and/or operation impact.
Our incident work is divided into six key areas of work:
Prevent: use evidence and incident causes to direct our preventative work and
protective regulatory regimes. Influence legislation, policy and operational activities
including our future natural resource management principles to provide resilient
ecosystems.
Prepare: Assess risks; communicate clearly and provide useful information; provide
training and exercises; organisational resilience; work with our partners for planning,
training and exercising; provide guidance and plans and focus on natural resource
management.
Respond: Use trigger points for our actions; warn and inform; follow emergency
plans; ensure clear communication; organisational readiness; ensure our plans are
accessible.
Deploy: effective and resilient resource management for deploying our staff across
our organisation in the right place at the right time, with the correct support structure.
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Recover: start the recovery activities and appropriate advice or mitigation measures
during the response phase to ensure all consequences are managed to minimise
impact to the environment.
Review: learn from experience; provide key messages for those affected; review
procedures and plans as required and adopt improved ways of working.
Types of incidents in which we have a primary role include those involving:
Flood warning & response
Designated sites
Wildlife crime
Air quality
Control of major accident hazards (COMAH)
Protected species
Pollution (air, land & water)
Plant and animal health
Non-native species
Drought
Maritime incidents
Nuclear and radioactive substances
NRW’s Business continuity
In promoting our corporate plan, our stakeholders have told us that most of the
businesses we work with share our environmental aims and welcome a more
collaborative and streamlined approach. This means working together from the start,
through evidence based preventative programmes and awareness raising, linking in
with trade bodies and partnerships in talking about the reduction of potential and real
impacts, considering rural and agricultural business as well as industry alongside
biodiversity protection. Case study examples can be found in Appendix 3.
By working and learning together we can share experiences that have affected other
parts of Wales, look for solutions and provide timely responses in protecting and
improving the environment around us. We also learn from others at UK and
International levels.
Please note: Health and Safety incidents are currently managed separately through
legal line management responsibilities.
4. Incident Communication
Communicating before, during and after incidents is crucial to show our proactive
engagement with responders, partners and importantly those communities potentially
or directly affected by an incident. A well-informed public organisation is better able
to respond to an incident, increasing its resilience to cope during and recover after it.
Our methods will range from communications such as direct flood warnings, press
releases, briefings, to monitoring and managing social media. A key component of this
will be our officers and duty managers’ ability to access and evaluate incident
information not only to manage our resources but also to communicate timely
information externally and protect our reputation and role.
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We will communicate effectively in each of the types of incident management work we
do. In preparing for and reviewing after incidents we will liaise closely and regularly
with our partners and stakeholders through, for example, stakeholder groups, Local
Resilience Forums, joint working initiatives, trade associations and through our
website.
When responding to an incident we will provide clear and timely advice, as well as
warnings where relevant. Our role will differ in each type of incident but, either
directly from us or via one of our partners, we shall communicate about the impact
the incident may have on people’s health and wellbeing, on businesses and on the
environment.
5. Impact of incidents
We need to protect the environment and all our natural resources in Wales by
ensuring we have activities and procedures to prevent, prepare, respond and review
our role in incidents. Impact scale and breadth can range dramatically from the
small minor incidents we deal with on a day to day basis to the major incidents that
affects communities.
If we do not put in place measures to protect our environment then incidents will
devalue the worth of our natural resources around us. Our working together helps us
reduce impacts and consequences of incidents and we need to define our future
natural resource management principles to encompass a joined up approach
whether it’s with our own teams responding, land owners, regulated industry, groups
or alongside emergency responders on scene so that we protect or minimise
environmental impact.
To explain the impact of incidents they can be broadly split into the following:
Environmental Impact
This includes short, medium or even long term contamination or pollution of land,
water or air with harmful biological, chemical or radioactive matter, flooding,
degradation or destruction of habitat, plant or animal species’ populations. It is in
these scenarios that we are best placed to play a significant role.
Social and well-being Impacts
This includes both the direct health impacts (number of people affected, fatalities,
injuries, human illness or physical injury) and the indirect health impacts (such as
mental health illnesses) that arise because of the consequences of the incident or an
impact on an organisation.
Social impact includes the impact upon availability of social welfare provision;
disruption of facilities for transport; damage to property; disruption to the supply of
money, food, water, energy or fuel; disruption of electronic or other systems of
communication; homelessness, and public disorder or lack of trust in the authorities.
In these situations our role is minimal and mainly in support.
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Economic Impacts
The economic impact of the incidents can be broadly divided into demand and supply
type consequences which includes both direct (e.g. loss of goods, buildings,
infrastructure) and indirect (e.g. loss of business, increased demand for public
services, small/large scale damage to transport infrastructure). One off or repeated
incidents in a particular location can reduce the area’s attractiveness as a place to live
in, for businesses to invest in or for people to visit, and as such on tourism which forms
a significant part of Wales’ economy. Again we assess our response to these incidents
in line with our procedures.
6. Corporate Priorities
Most of our incident work fits under the ‘Good for People’ section of our Corporate
and Business Plans. However, the consequences of incidents have far reaching
effects across all our activities and programmes especially if no mitigation or
prevention is in place. Incident management work therefore also has strong links into
NRW’s Good for Environment, Business and Knowledge Themes.
Our Corporate Plan 2014 -2018 commits us to:
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Delivering an effective response to environmental incidents and risks, such as
flood events, pollution and disease outbreak
Helping communities to work together – improving local environments, such as
tackling fly tipping
Protecting and improving air, land, sea and water quality
Tackling pests and diseases and invasive non-native species, accepting that the
spread of non-native species or disease outbreaks can be unpredictable and may
require additional resources if we are to halt their spread
Building more resilient ecosystems and help halt loss of biodiversity
Understanding our environment, economy and people better.
Raising people’s awareness of their flood risk and what actions they take
Reducing the number of serious pollutions incidents using a priorities risk based
approach
Help decrease the risk of flooding to people and properties by building
maintaining and operating flood defences and implementing innovative ways of
managing uplands and lowlands to hold and slow down water to help reduce
flood risk to communities
Gaining and maintaining ISO 14001 accreditation for our environmental
management and being exemplar in areas of our work
7. Delivering Results
Our primary objective will be to reduce the number of serious incidents in Wales
through activities that either reduce the likelihood or severity of an incident occurring
(preventative) or by improving our response preparedness to influence the outcome
of any incidents that do occur. In responding to incidents we will follow the polluter
pays principle and where appropriate, we will seek cost recovery of our time in
responding to and preventing incidents causing harm to the environment.
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We aim to work as integrated as possible when we prepare for and respond to
incidents. We will consider the potential and real impacts of each incident, and we
will map out the consequences of major and significant incidents looking at the
impacts to people, economy and all the pathways that affect Wales’ natural
resources.
Our role in responding to an incident will differ depending on the incident type. We
will influence at all levels and all sectors. This will include the Welsh and UK
Governments, the four Wales Local Resilience Fora, business sector groups and
organisations operating at local, Wales and UK and international levels. One element
of our role will be as a strategic influencer, using persuasive evidence and technical
advice to drive preparedness and reduce the likelihood that incidents will happen.
The other element will be operational, responding to incidents by providing advice
and in some instances actual intervention by our staff to minimise the consequences
of an incident, and to monitor recovery from any after effects.
7.2 What do we want to achieve?
The overarching aim of this Strategy is that:
The environment, people and economy of Wales benefit from there being less
frequent and less severe environmental incidents
This supports our statutory duties and powers in providing technical information
directly to inform communities, businesses and organisations of risks and the
provision of advice for our operational role in managing incidents when they happen.
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Increased public understanding of and care for the environment – leading to
behaviour change and less environmental incidents
Improved quality of Wales’ air, land, water and biodiversity
Less detrimental impacts upon people and the economy – making
communities more resilient and attractive places to live and work in
7.3 How will we achieve our aim?
We will achieve this by working actively with others to:
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Define our role so that it is integrated, effective and communicated in a
clearly understood manner when preparing for and responding to each type of
incident
 Review how we deliver that role to ensure it is risk based, consistent and
focuses on where and how we can maximise the contribution we can make to
the management of incidents
 Be an industry best public body, applying best practice to ensure our activities
do not cause any environmental incidents
 Raise awareness that preventing incidents helps create a pollution free,
healthy environment that has major benefits for peoples’ well being, local
economies and resilience to climate change.
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7.4 Working with others
Working with our customers and communities is a core and essential activity for
Natural Resources Wales in order that we ensure that we are responsive to what is
required. We will strive to have the right information in the right place at the right time
to provide timely and effective decisions.
We know we cannot do this alone and we achieve our desired outcomes through our
existing partnerships, such as with the Police, the Fire and Rescue Service, Local
Authorities, Partnership for Action against Wildlife Crime, Fly Tipping Wales and
national and UK business sectors groups. As a relatively new organisation we will
review the wider network of groups and partnerships in Wales, the UK and
internationally so that we can identify, maintain and establish links where it is
beneficial to do so.
We will learn, train, exercise and respond alongside our partners in the Local
Resilience Fora and other groups where appropriate to do so that we maximise
opportunities for joint sharing of knowledge and apply a joint operational approach to
ensure incidents are dealt with in their entirety.
8. Our focus over the next five years
Over the next five years we will enhance our strategic influence and focus our efforts
on promoting good practice and the merits of avoiding environmental incidents and
on delivering our incident management role in a way that is effective and efficient
and fit for purpose.
We will prioritise our activities outlined in the Action Plan to be delivered over the
next one to two years to link in with our integration work of the workforce that
includes the creation of the new operational teams and embedding the NRM
approach so that everyone contributes on this basis.
An Action Plan accompanies this Strategy, setting out priority actions across NRW to
help us plan and deliver our work.
The activities that can help make a real difference include:
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Reviewing the way in which we categorise, prioritise and respond to each type
of incident so we focus our efforts on the ones where we can make the
biggest difference in protecting people and/or the environment
More fully integration of the incident management procedures and rotas from
our legacy bodies to deliver a co-ordinated, efficient and an integrated
approach to incident management
Communicating clearly about our role, the advice we can provide, and when
an incident occurs communicating clearly with affected communities so that
they understand the risks, impacts and our response actions.
Developing and promoting our incident culture to produce an incident impact
assessment process so that all incident consequences are identified, impacts
assessed and protective measures taken.
Raise awareness of the costs of environmental incidents to people and the
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economy and promote a prevention is better than cure culture.
Developing a competency training framework to provide our incident
responders with the right skills for our broad remit and ensure they are robust
enough to take informed decisions.
Embracing new technology wherever possible, to provide an efficient
mechanism of providing knowledge across the business and with
communities and partners in the right place at the right time.
Embedding an incident learning process to show where we have implemented
changes in response to issues identified during incidents.
Review and identify where our wider technical skills in the business can
support our incident response, provide better knowledge and where
appropriate provide expertise to other organisations.
Be industry best on our own estate and in our wider activities that have
potential to cause an environmental incident, ensuring we put in place
appropriate mitigation to prevent or stop such an event.
9. Monitoring and Evaluation
Each year, we will monitor and evaluate this strategy and progress against the action
agreed priorities in the action plan. This approach will allow us to identifying gaps,
review, adapt policy and provide solutions to evolving issues.
10. Reviewing our work
In addition to monitoring and evaluating our contribution through our Results Based
Accounting Plan, we will regularly review our strategy work and report annually to
ensure it remains fit for purpose.
We will provide an annual progress report to the Board and report to ARAC on a half
yearly basis.
We will also request and act on customer feedback as a core and routine part of our
service delivery, undertake customer satisfaction surveys and publish the results of
these with improvement plans where needed.
Appendix 1: Definitions
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By ‘incident’’ we mean:
A specific event, which is brought to our attention, and is within our areas of
responsibility and which may have an environmental and/or operational impact.
An incident is a specific event or occurrence, not usually an ongoing situation of
which we are already aware.
An incident can either happen in a single location or in multiple locations at the same
time or sequentially (such as flooding).
Such events are brought to our attention through reports from members of the public,
emergency services, local authorities, other regulators, industry, Natural Resources
Wales staff and other parties.
Incident Categorisation
Incidents within our area of responsibility, we categorise according to the impact (or
potential) to the environment:
Category 1- major, serious, persistent and or extensive impact or effect on the
environment, people and/or property
Category 2 - significant impact or effect on the environment, people and/or property
Category 3 - minor or minimal impact or effect on the environment, people and/or
property
Category 4- no impact
Service level
We will undertake a risk based approach to incidents where our response will be
proportionate to three main factors,
 ability to take action to prevent or mitigate impact to the environment
 our role within the incident, and
 our professional reputation in influencing the greater public interest
We currently attend all major and significant incidents within 2 hours during office
hours and 4 hours outside office hours and other incidents on a risk based approach.
We will be reviewing our service levels.
Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and Category One Responder
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004, and accompanying non-legislative measures,
delivers a single framework for civil protection in the UK. The Act is separated into 2
substantive parts: local arrangements for civil protection (Part 1); and emergency
powers (Part 2).
Part 1 of the Act and supporting Regulations and statutory guidance ‘Emergency
preparedness’ establish a clear set of roles and responsibilities for those involved in
emergency preparation and response at the local level. The Act divides local
responders into 2 categories, imposing a different set of duties on each.
Those in Category 1 are organisations at the core of the response to most
emergencies (the emergency services, local authorities, NHS bodies and Natural
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Resources Wales). Category 1 responders are subject to the full set of civil
protection duties. They will be required to:
 assess the risk of emergencies occurring and use this to inform contingency
planning
 put in place emergency plans
 put in place business continuity management arrangements
 put in place arrangements to make information available to the public about
civil protection matters and maintain arrangements to warn, inform and advise
the public in the event of an emergency
 share information with other local responders to enhance co-ordination
 co-operate with other local responders to enhance co-ordination and
efficiency
 provide advice and assistance to businesses and voluntary organisations
about business continuity management (local authorities only)
Category 2 organisations (the Health and Safety Executive, transport and utility
companies) are ‘co-operating bodies’. They are less likely to be involved in the heart
of planning work, but will be heavily involved in incidents that affect their own sector.
Category 2 responders have a lesser set of duties - co-operating and sharing
relevant information with other Category 1 and 2 responders.
Category 1 and 2 organisations come together to form ‘local resilience forums’
(based on police areas) which will help co-ordination and co-operation between
responders at the local level.
Natural Resource Management
Natural resource management refers to the management of natural resources such
as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management
affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship).
Resilient Ecosystems
Resilient ecosystems is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to an incident,
event or disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly.
Business Continuity Incidents
We will have business continuity and recovery arrangements in place to ensure our
business is resilient during periods of disruption so we can continue to deliver priority
business activities and recover from any disruption as quickly as possible. A
business disruption can have an impact to staff, ICT systems and workspace.
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Appendix 2: Incident sectors
Incident
Sector
Forestry
Biodiversity,
nature
conservation
and
countryside
Environment
Management
Description/ Sub sector
Current UK Forestry standards (mandatory) include impact to plant health, illegal
felling, protected habitats and species, biodiversity, scheduled monuments etc.,
rights of way, forest access, visitor health safety, Water Framework Directive,
illegal activities on our land
Current documentation include: Environmental Damage Regulations, conservation
duties, statutory protected sites, non-statutory sites, protected species, biodiversity
action plant species and habitats; maritime advisory role; wildlife crime.
Radioactivity, Nuclear, Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH)
Currently NRW manages radioactive incidents with expert technical advice and
support from the Environment Agency radiation specialists. Radioactive
contamination can affect air, land and water as well as public, plant and animal
health.
Air/Odour/noise
Currently includes: effects on human senses, amenity value
Water contamination:
Any spillage or discharge to noxious, poisonous or polluting matter to surface
waters or groundwater will be presumed to have an impact.
Fisheries
Water
Resources
Navigation
Floods
Currently includes: Bathing waters, water quality physical, biological chemical,
amenity, industrial/commerce/agricultural impacts, abstractions, fisheries/habitats
potential effect on human health.
Land contamination
Currently includes impacts on soil, the built environment and anything which is
part of the terrestrial ecosystem (such as plants and animals)
Currently assessment is limited to activities or substances under our regulation.
Currently includes: physical, biological chemical contamination, potential human
health effects, amenity, nature conservation, property, industry, commerce,
agricultural.
Currently includes: illegal fishing, fish kills from non-pollution sources, fish disease,
illegal fish introduction, fisheries habitat damage.
Currently include: permitted or unpermitted abstractions or impoundments; change
of water course/ground water flow due to dry weather or drought; loss of flow;
includes similar consequences to land and water.
Currently include: any incident that occurs on a waterway where we are the
competent authority for navigation and has the potential to, or is impacting on
people, property or the environment
Currently includes: actual or potential flooding, or damage to a nature
conservation site, from land drainage works; any report of flooding from rivers,
tidal activity or rising groundwater; forecasted or actual rainfall, tidal activity or
rising groundwater that requires a warning or reactive work; obstructions damaged
or failed assets; reservoirs.
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Appendix 3: Case Studies
Case Study 1
A road tanker, carrying hazardous chemicals, collided with other traffic and left the
road and entered the River X. Emergency services closed the road upon arrival and
requested assistance from Natural Resources Wales. No casualties at scene. The
lorry’s diesel tank ruptured with 150 litres lost to the river, the front compartment of
chemical tanker holding 5,000 litres of landfill leachate also ruptured and leaking into
river. Approximately 1 km downstream the river enters an estuary with a shell fishery,
Sites of Special Scientific Interest and popular bathing beach.
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work with other responders in the Local Resilience Forum to produce contingency plans which
includes our role and others role in responding, procedures and share information
maintain our procedures and training
understand and prepare to alleviate risks
undertake proactive educational and preventative work across high risk incident causes
identify sensitive receptors and notify affected stakeholders
assess impact and scale
generate reports to the wider business and Welsh Government
liaise and work with other responders as appropriate, Police who lead public safety and
evacuation, Fire and Rescue Service to provide equipment, training and guidance
assess any potential public health risks and notify Public Health Wales
trigger our operational response
put in place staff to manage the incident
assess and prepare for appropriate enforcement action
provide updates and important take action media messages following the one voice principle
notify all affected stakeholders such as abstractors , water users to provide expected time and
scale of incident
support emergency services, Police lead public safety issues and Fire and Rescue Service
lead on scene, we advise on recovery activities on scene
advise owners of sensitive receptors such as sites of special scientific interest, ground water
vulnerable areas, bathing beaches, and so on
advise other affected organisations and other regulators
assess scale and consequences of incident to the environment, including potential food chain
issues
work with other regulators to review the need to suspend or change permits if pollution affects
other activities
open incident room and support multi-agency command centres to provide liaison officers
provide updates to public health wales advice and guidance to emergency services
advise polluter for immediate first aid pollution mitigation measures
gather evidence as appropriate, work with other regulators
provide support where appropriate to emergency services
provide timely and co-ordinated media messages following the one voice principle
review our response and procedures
learn and change by improving our response
produce multi agency learning and improved response
identify best practice and implement
assess, understand the scale of environmental damage
undertake impact assessment for major or significant incidents
monitor environmental damage as appropriate
review and support other regulators to provide advice and guidance to those affected
monitor and advise on environmental mitigation or recovery
provide updates to the media and affected organisations
follow the polluter pays principal
seek appropriate enforcement action
review the information from the incident to better inform our risk awareness activities
work with Local Resilience Forums to learn and be better prepared
Note: We have included our prevention, deployment and recovery activities within the three headings above.
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Incident Management Strategy 2015 – 2020
Appendix 3: Case Studies
Case Study 2
Typically weather forecast for early spring with a weather front building in the Atlantic
and tracking from the West. Heavy prolonged rain expected with strong winds for a
duration of three to five days affecting in the far West first and spreading to all Eastern
areas of Wales by second day. Low lying ground saturated and water logged from
previous weather fronts and river levels high. Flooding of low lying land expected.
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raise flood awareness in communities at risk of flooding
work with other responders in the Local Resilience Forum to produce contingency plans which
includes our role and others role in responding, procedures and share information
work specifically with Police and Local Authority for flood evacuation plans
maintain our procedures and training
receive and interpret Weather forecasts
receive MET office alerts
weather forecasting and monitoring
river / coastal modelling for impacts
liaise with MET office
issue Flood Alerts to public, businesses and organisations
generate reports to the wider business and Welsh Government
support other responders as appropriate, Police are the lead for public safety and evacuation,
Local Authority for shelter and recovery
assess impacts and trigger our operational response
undertake proactive and reactive checks on river catchments or coastal areas e.g. grid
clearance, preventative work such as installation of stop logs
put in place staff to manage the incident
provide updates and important take action messages via the media following the one voice
principle
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issue flood Warnings to public, business and organisations
assess and monitor river and coastal levels
maintain our assets
support and provide advice to emergency services, work with Police to advise on evacuation
provide advice to public, business and communities
provide operational response to flooded areas
support any operational work with emergency services and local authorities
provide updates to flood warnings
provide all clear messages direct to public
update media messages
support the local authorities for advice on recovery operations
assess environmental damage
provide engineering advice as appropriate
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review our response and procedures
learn and change by improving our response
contribute to multi agency learning and improved response
identify best practice and implement
assess, understand and survey any flood/environmental damage
maintain / repair assets
provide advice and guidance for repair of others assets
monitor and advise on environmental mitigation or recovery
support and work with the public, communities and organisations for recovery and guide for
future protection, Local Authorities lead the recovery work
review the information we hold about predicted flooding to better inform how we respond,
model and forecast our activities
work with Local Resilience Forums to learn and be better prepared
raise flood awareness with the public
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Note: We have included our prevention, deployment and recovery activities within the three headings above.
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